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Automic Automation vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Automic Automation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (2nd)
VMware Aria Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
169
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Automic Automation and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Automic Automation is designed for Workload Automation and holds a mindshare of 7.2%, up 6.0% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 11.0% mindshare, down 12.5% since last year.
Workload Automation
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

AnkitSrivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Good automation, handles complex jobs, and is easy to manage
We do use the solution for business-critical processes. We have a lot of complex jobs. They are using multiple databases to connect to one master. We execute jobs on multiple databases. I'm currently working with Broadcom and have created a few alert mechanisms for bug alerts. When we find bugs and report them, we can get hard fixes applied. The solution's ability to handle large volumes of data is very good. I've been happy with it. We can improve so many things by 20% or more. It's a very costly product, and the client who is paying for it needs to see results, and so far, they are. The GUI interface is very good. It's user-friendly, even for new users. Within a few days, they can learn the solution. It's easy to learn and not overly complex. In one console, we can run multiple executions and manage the load balancer, et cetera. It's very easy now to manage complex workflows using this product. We can maximize agent performance. We can execute a large number of jobs. Compared to other tools, it's much more efficient. The visibility and control is excellent. The predictive modeling provided by AI is very good. We can implement fixes automatically as well. Its predictive modeling has been very critical. Jobs are executing on this and that is very important. Even if the master is down for an hour, the company can lose millions of dollars, so having that predictability is key to managing downtime in advance. We can reduce our job workload failure rates across multiple cloud environments. For example, if we have servers and we are installing agents in the master, we can create agents on multiple servers and we can execute jobs on both agents at one time. That way, if one server goes down, there is no disruption. The jobs will execute on the second agent - and no human interface is required for the task. We've been able to save time. Previously, we were dependent upon so many team members, and it would take one week to create one console or one tool. However, now, within three or four hours, we are creating one master and agents. We save six days. It's comprehensive - but we do have an audit feature. We have a separate audit team and in the tool itself, we have audit automation so we can run audits on a quarterly basis. Sometimes we have big queries and the data is massive and difficult to manage. However, with this product, we can schedule a job and, in three months, we can get a report directly without wasting time. It's safer in terms of audit requirements. With the tool, we've been able to save on operational costs. With other tools, we had difficulty with management, and there were so many dependencies on so many teams. With one console, we can create multiple agents that run on Oracle and have one point of control with multiple features. We can run the solution on both cloud and on-prem environments. We're 90% cloud currently. However, 10% is still left on-prem. Our plan is to move 100% to the cloud.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good stability, supports a hybrid model and easy to use
There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial. This is because a higher number of VMware licenses requires more infrastructure capacity from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) or Colocation partners. Consequently, when discussing the operation of this virtualized environment from VMware over a contractual period of five years, the overall cost to the customer is influenced by the infrastructure requirements. If there's a feasible way to decrease these prerequisites for the infrastructure supporting the virtualization layer, it would be advantageous in terms of cost for the customer. Any customer in today's world exists or wants to exist in a hybrid model, so in future releases, we would like to see this. So, going forward, if this virtualized environment would exist, it has to be a combination of on-premise plus public cloud Azure/AWS. It should be more seamless when your interface or when you are interacting with workloads running on-premise VMware/AWS VMware. So it is only there in some capacity and space, and I'm aware of it. And Azure and VMware already have a tie-up on the same lines, but at the same time, if it is more seamless, if it is more interchangeable, if you could move your workloads, or if you can access your workloads or your virtual machines irrespective of whatever platform it is running, whether it is on-premises, or cloud or public cloud, it'll be a lot more comfortable for a user than the user to consume that infrastructure. Firstly, it needs to have a combination of deployment and be more seamless for the customers. Secondly, more software-defined features, more in terms of managing the infrastructure pool in a software-defined way. Managing the infrastructure pool in a more optimized fashion is going to be the key in the upcoming times. It's not just on-premise, but at the same time, it should also be the public cloud as well. Probably because when I meet my customers, this is one thing that I always tell them. I have seen people moving from on-premise public cloud only to realize at the end of the month that they end up paying a higher bill compared to what they were paying when they were running their business on-premise. The reason is that they do not understand or do not realize the full potential of the public cloud, and the way it should be consumed, the way it should be used, and the way it should be scheduled to ensure that the billing at the end of the month is very optimal. You pay for what exactly you need, not everything that you have from the cloud. That's not a way to use the cloud, whether it is on-premise or from the cloud. For example, an enterprise has over 100 applications. Out of that 100 applications, only 25 applications are running the production instances, and the remaining 75 are running non-production instances. It can be a development environment, a test environment, a sandbox, etc. In this case, you need to run only the 25 applications on the public cloud 24/7. You do not need to run your remaining 75 applications 24/7. Because, eventually, your developers, testers, quality managers, and whoever will use the non-production environment only when they're in the office and working on those applications. Then why do we need to have those applications, which are non-production in nature, lower environments? So we're running on the public cloud all the time because, for a cloud provider, it is a virtual machine; whether you are consuming it for production work or non-production work, it is going to charge you the same bill. And if you are not optimizing, if you're not scheduling workloads, you are actually wasting money. You're wasting your money, and your bills, which you are going to pay with the public cloud provider provided, are going to be bad. It's going to be crazy. And then customers do not know what to do in this situation. And you cannot fight with the public cloud provider because they would say, "I had given you all the possibilities, all the opportunities to learn about it, the way you should be functioning it, the way you should be utilizing it. If you are not using it the way it should be used, That's not my problem."

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Number one, A+, is the scripting language, and the ability to go in, and take an already robust, consistent, strong tool, and turn it into an incredibly scalable, flexible tool, that you can literally do anything you want to with."
"It is very flexible in terms of using the functionalities and build processes. The biggest benefit perhaps is that we have so many possibilities in UC4 or Automic Automation to reach the target. We can more or less build each requirement from our customers."
"Integration with most of the platforms that we have within the company's Windows, Linux, and Unix. Integrating these inside the automation agent for scheduling, backups, file transfer, and SAP jobs."
"It is not possible do our jobs without automation software. Automic is a great help to us."
"We use it to automate our business."
"With Automic Automation, we can do a lot of things. One very interesting feature is being able to work with scripting, which is not possible with some other schedulers. We can cover all business needs with this product."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the tool. With a little bit of time and understanding, it is capable of completing any business use case we have encountered. There are many ways to achieve desired results without much issue."
"The file transfer feature is the most valuable for process automation, as many organizations rely heavily on data transfer."
"The most valuable features are the Catalog View and the access control business group. Access provisioning is probably the main use case for us, so we can separate access to different Catalog items among the different business groups and have that tied back to our AD LDAP systems."
"The big benefit is it will spin up VMs quickly so it would take about 13 to 15 minutes to deploy a virtual machine. Whereas, if I were doing it based on an email from users who are requesting VMs, it might take time for me to hear back from them. This could be anywhere from an hour to a day."
"The initial setup is straightforward. It's not that difficult."
"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"usability; It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it."
"Using the VMware vRealize self-service portal, we can better manage the lifecycle."
"Being able to give provisioning of environments over to our developers and the different teams has enabled them to put up environments faster and also freed up time for the IT team. This is really one of our bread and butter solutions for our developers."
 

Cons

"It is very difficult to migrate. The release automation should be in one package."
"The workflows should be clearer and more expressive."
"I would also like to see a little bit more connectivity, more, "Play nice with other toys." For instance, we have IServ as our primary tool for our service request tickets. In order for it to play nice with Automic, we had to actually create a file and put it somewhere, where Automic can see it. I would like to see more connectivity with other tools, or more compatibility with other tools."
"Integration with the cloud is an area for improvement. They have to make it somehow fit or usable for cloud use cases. Right now, it works great for our on-prem data center, but they have to come up with a very good reason why people should be using it in the cloud."
"The pricing has the potential to be high."
"We would like to have some features with the AWI with the founding technique, which cannot currently be delivered."
"It seems still very technical to get the full features out... Once you get to some of the leadership levels, such as myself, you don't have time to go digging into it. It would be nice to have some additional performance features such as reporting, analytics."
"When you want to use the entirety of Automic, it is heavy."
"The back-end has a steep learning curve."
"There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial."
"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."
"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."
"The stability on the 6.2 version is very bad. It crashes. VMware tech support knows the IIS component is a bit buggy."
"It does go down from time to time. We have some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day. That affects the ability for them to deploy."
"We had a lot of issues at first. Especially with doing any kind of upgrades, it was a complete tear-down and a complete rebuild of all the Blueprints. The upgrade process was not easy or intuitive at all. But it seems to be getting better."
"It needs to be more dynamic with variable customization to make new workloads more reliable. It also needs to be faster. We are exploring vRA version 8 right now and maybe what I'm requesting is available in the new version, but we haven't yet explored it fully."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution seems expensive to me, but it does the job well."
"Automatic is heavily integrated in our organization. The cost to change would be a huge factor for us, and we have not found any other product that is better out there."
"Before I joined this company, Automic had a contract with its parent company, and their pricing was very competitive. However, when we split into multiple businesses, the contract increased significantly, becoming an expensive tool."
"Certain licenses can be a bit expensive. The PeopleSoft agents, in particular, are a bit pricey."
"There are a lot of new features, but we do not use them because they are too expensive. The price point could be less."
"It has helped us reduce costs."
"This is a support system for us, not our core business, so we purchased this product inexpensively."
"The pricing is based on the number of servers and agents."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
The pricing model for Automic has changed from a host-based licensing model to one based on successful execution. I still prefer the earlier licensing model, but I understand that it was likely cha...
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
There are certain areas in Automic that need improvement, such as the complexity of workflow dependencies. When you have workflows within workflows, it can become complicated. The existing options ...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

Automic Dollar Universe
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, Redwood Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.